Europa startede den teknologiske revolution, men er i de sidste årtier faldet gevaldigt bagud i kapløbet med USA og Kina.
I dag halter vi så langt efter, at der skal drastiske og nye midler i brug, hvis ikke vi skal ende som en ”digital koloni”, mener Martin Hullin, direktør i den tyske fond og tænketank Bertelsmann Stiftung.
Fonden foreslog derfor i foråret et ambitiøst investeringsprogram på 300 milliarder euro, der skal skabe europæiske alternativer til de dominerende kinesiske og amerikanske selskaber gennem en såkaldt ’Eurostack’.
ADD-projektet møder Martin Hullin i København for at spørge, hvordan den høje ambition skal blive til virkelighed. Interviewet er redigeret for længde og klarhed.
How did Europe fall behind in the tech race?
“Europe has been a real innovator for many decades during the technological revolution, also during the period in the 80s and 90s when new information technology was being developed and new networks were being built. We had major companies that were active in telecommunication, for example, or industrial digitalisation as well. But there was this period around the late 90s, early 2000 where something new came onto the block. And it was this innovation paradigm that we almost grew up with from Silicon Valley – the whole notion of almost endless venture capital, of the hyper scaling model, of going quick, maybe breaking things while you’re doing so, and being first to market at the end of the day. And given also the notion that the Cold War was over, the American superiority in technology was not perceived as a threat, but more as an opportunity of joint prosperity.”
“There was lots of willingness to count on these types of solutions. And this coincided with underinvestment and lack of protection of locally grown alternatives. Over the course of two decades a lot of neuralgic points within our industry, society, economy became very dependent on technological solutions that were not developed in Europe, nor aligned in some cases with its values. To Google something became a standard, and there wasn’t this perception that this would ever pose a risk for democratic decision making, for example, or would pose more, deeper risks for the economy.”
You have proposed the concept of a Eurostack to tackle this challenge. For anyone not familiar with the concept, how would you describe it?
“The Eurostack is a digital policy strategy and also a vision of what could be if the digital infrastructure was aligned with Europe’s values and would enable Europeans to thrive within an ecosystem that is not only extractive, in regard to value, data and other aspects.”
“It is also meant as a mental model to make stakeholders and citizens better understand the complexity of the digital transformation. Because when we talk about digitalisation, we think of maybe our smartphone. We think maybe of Googling something, or maybe the platforms on social media where disinformation becomes more and more rampant. But very few are seeing digitalisation as a layered stack of also technological dependencies and opportunities.
Eurostacken er et forsøg på at vise, hvordan den digitale verden er bygget af lag, som er internt afhængige. For at kunne bygge chips skal man have råmaterialerne til det, og alle lagene er derfor afhængige af hinanden.
“It starts with the rare earth, which is necessary to build the semiconductors. On top you need to build computers and server farms to sustain the AI transformation that we are witnessing. And only on the top applications come into play.”
“Once you start seeing this, and then also realising that, let’s say 80% of the cloud sector is non-European, or the semiconductor space, with a few exceptions, is completely in the hands of American or Chinese producers. And what this actually means for the capability of our economies, for example, to have a competitive advantage, certain questions are being raised.”
“The point is not to substitute all the existing infrastructure with European funding, but about putting an idea out there that starts a debate. If there are areas where we should think of starting to build our own alternatives to and to conceptualise something that keeps the democratic project in the European fashion also thriving.”
Do European countries need to give up sovereignty to make this vision a reality?
“I’m not advocating for federating the European Union per se. I think our power lies in our heterogeneity. But what we are lacking is in critical areas, strategic focus where we want to work together and where it’s a non-negotiable that we join forces. If you think, for example, does it make sense to build 27 individual, single sign on standards, for example? Or does it make sense to build 27 alternatives to the Google search index? No. This is something that we can work on together, and it is almost a historic echo, an opportunity for what brought the European Union together in the first place – the coal and steel union of smaller countries.”
You advocate investing 300 billion EUR over the course of ten years. How important are investments to make this vision a reality?
“Let me start by saying it is not just about money. Regulatory harmonisation is important, governance structures are important. And also a proactive industrial policy is important. So it all has a direction like on a compass where the needle goes in one direction.”
“But the money problem certainly plays a role, because what we are observing is gigantic investments overseas into compute infrastructure. It is not to be underestimated that a single big tech company invests more in a year than many governments are actually investing into their own digital infrastructure, over the course of a decade, for example. So definitely money will have to be invested. It will need to be in tandem between the private sector and public incentives, there’s no doubt about that. But our proposal is not about a top-down approach of spending 300 billion.”
In the report you advocate for a “Europe First” approach. Is there also a geopolitical risk in choosing this route since the American administration and the tech companies are becoming more and more intertwined?
“I think the threats that we are hearing in Europe are a sign that we are considering the right things. I have said this before, the Eurostack and some of the debates in Europe around digital resilience and sovereignty are not exercises in isolationism. It’s a balancing act of going to the neuralgic points out of our own sovereignty and to choose certain areas where it’s a non-negotiable that those decisions should not depend on choices made in other countries.”
Are there any alternatives to the Eurostack as you see it?
“The status quo would be to remain in a dependent relationship. And seeing what we are seeing at the moment, and there’s evidence for that, doing so will erode our capability of remaining liberal democracies. This affects the information ecosystem, this affects the capability of our companies and industry to innovate independently. And it erodes the capability of our decision makers to make well-informed decisions on topics like the climate catastrophe and other things. So I think the status quo is not acceptable. Henceforth there need to be alternatives there.”
“The purely regulatory model that has been at the forefront in the past 5 to 10 years under the commission, regulations like the GDPR and others that also set global standards, is also challenged since it doesn’t incentivise per se a competitive market ecosystem.”
“But I think this is an awakening moment that this is also about power, this is about geopolitics and regulation needs to be implementable. I think this rude awakening we are witnessing at this stage is that just the regulatory model won’t work either.
Henceforth, my deep conviction is that we need to start building parts of the stack to have more strategic options, not in order to obtain complete full autonomy. Technological transformation is way too complex with interdependent global supply chains for that to work. But to pick out areas where we believe we can lead and value driven innovations and be champions, and at the same time reduce our exposure to lock-in effects, further tariff, negotiations or threats, because then suddenly we are not as dependent as we were before.
“90% of German companies, not digital companies, but of Germany’s economy, would cease to function in less than two years if suddenly some virtual kill switch would be engaged. Whether the solution ends up being the Eurostack as a full-blown horizontal, vertical integrated tool, that remains to be seen. But we need to start somewhere. And I think there will be areas like defence, for example, the health ecosystem, the green transition, where it’s a non-negotiable that we are now starting to build a real alternative.”
“I think, after all of the blood, sweat and tears, the war experiences, the very challenging part of growing together as a very heterogeneous continent, I think we have a duty and a responsibility to actually give it a try and not to give up from the get-go only because some bully somewhere says ‘No, it’s too late for you guys to do anything’”.
So we have the cards?
“Yes. Let’s be bullish about Europe.”